Breakthrough Research Could Replace Insulin Shots With Pills

Whether you don't like needles, or whether you really don't like needles, there's some good news on the horizon: a special "bioadhesive" coating that was just developed at Brown University is bringing us one step closer to saying goodbye to injections and hello to things like insulin pills.

It's not like people are out there injecting drugs for just fun (well, except for the people out there who are injecting drugs just for fun); injections are crucial for administering protein-based drugs—like insulin—that can't make it through the stomach to the small intestine where they can get absorbed into the bloodstream. The bioadhesive coating developed by researchers at Brown not only lets doses get through unscathed, but also sticks them to the small intestine and dishes them out at controllable speeds.

When researchers coated tons of 500-nanometer particles with the bioadhesive, called PBMAD, and fed them to some lab rats, they found that a PBMAD coating is roughly 20 percent more effective at getting medicines through the stomach acid gauntlet and into the bloodstream than the previous best. And 65 percent better than no coating at all.

The next goal is getting the right medicines to the right parts of the body in the right quantities, but the recent studies have proven that PBMAD is a promising delivery mechanism. Insulin pills might still be a way off, but a future with less needles sounds like a future worth looking forward to. More here.

This Nesting Storage Beats Any Set of Russian Dolls

Moving house has never been easier than with this amazing set of nesting storage units. Designed by Sasa Mitrovic of TwentyTree, an amazing six pieces fit together seamlessly—and look great, too.

Called Matrioshka, the wooden storage units all fit inside the large orange armoire. Pull out the cabinets as and when you need them, or use them all from the off. They have a pretty 60s vibe about them that may or may not be to your taste, but they're damn practical regardless.

While they made their debut at the Milan Design Week earlier this year, they're now to be manufactured by SCSplus and Ergomade. Sadly there's currently no word on pricing. More here.

A Garbage-Crushing Trash Can You Control With Your Bare Hands

Who likes taking out the trash? Nobody, that's who. We'll do anything we can to avoid trips to the curb, or the garbage chute, including letting it pile up for weeks on end. But a giant mountain of stinking trash in your kitchen isn't the only solution. This stainless steel trash can includes a manual compressor letting you squeeze roughly twice the amount of trash into its 10 gallon capacity.

It's kind of like having your own personal garbage truck, except that it's not waking you up at six o'clock in the morning. At $200 it is a pricey alternative to less capable garbage cans, but you have to factor in all the quality time you'll be gaining with this. Not to mention the sheer joy when you're able to squeeze one more empty chip bag in there, instead of having to empty it. More here.

This Wooden Bicycle Is Beautifully Impractical

There's a natural charm to cycling that allows you to feel at one with the environment that surrounds you—but if that's not enough, maybe you need this bike that's made from the environment that surrounds you.

There's no way around the fact that a wooden bicycle isn't as practical as its metallic brethren. Wood just isn't naturally suited to frame building: it doesn't weather as well, is bulky, and rides strangely. But this amalgam of wood and steel is a triumph of old-school design and craftsmanship, and its looks make up for the material's shortcomings.

There's a lot to lust over here, from the wooden handlebars to the neatly jointed head and seat tubes. But the best thing has to be those beautifully curved wooden mud guards, that hug the wheels just right. Pricing is as yet unconfirmed—expect it to be high—but the bikes will finally go on sale in September. More here.

This Throne of Books Is Your Own Private Personal Library

There's an endless number of distractions that can prevent us from curling up with a good book. So the folks at the London-based design studio, Tilt, created the OpenBook chair. It's an oversized comfy seat wrapped in an empty library that you can fill with your favorite books and magazines, creating an oasis of reading in a sea of distracting electronics.

The upholstered wall, featuring racks for hanging newspapers and magazines on the outside, also provides a bit of extra privacy from noise, and of course a place to rest your head. And while the OpenBook chair is certainly a lovely spot to escape into your favorite book, it also provides the perfect place to show off your amazing taste in literature to friends and other guests. Just keep the Where's Waldos hidden in a back room. More here.

What Does 200 Calories Look Like?

Fruits And Vegetables Are More Aware Than You Think

You might not think that spinach knows what's up, but the produce in your fridge is still alive and aware. Which is creepy. But kind of awesome. According to new research, fruits and vegetables still have circadian rhythms up to a week after being harvested. And they respond to light patterns by producing chemical compounds to protect themselves against herbivores.

When researchers subjected fruits and vegetables to light and dark based on when insect predators sleep and wake, the plants recognized the patterns and generated protective compounds called glucosinolates in response. And when samples of cabbage were put on the same light/dark schedule as looper moth caterpillars they were damaged the least by the predators, compared with other samples on different light cycles.

Lettuce, spinach, zucchini, sweet potatoes, carrots and blueberries all defended themselves similarly, though through different chemical mechanisms, when put on the looper moth caterpillar schedule. The research is interesting in itself, but more importantly has potential applications for reducing pesticide use in harvested crops. Though it may seem like protecting growing plants is the only goal, fruits and vegetables must also be safeguarded from pests after they are harvested. Plants' own defenses could reduce the need for harsh pesticides in the future. That zucchini knows when you eat ice cream in the middle of the night and it's throwing shade. More here.

What Are You Doing About Light Bulbs These Days?

There are the LED lightbulbs you know you should buy, and then there are the insane 10 for $10 sales that try to lure you back to the incandescent days. But betweeneverlasting light bulbs, app-controlled light bulbs and light bulbs that do the dishes and see into the future, it's pretty clear that change is upon us. Bulb life, light quality and price all factor in. What do you buy and why?

Researchers Have Found a Way To Cram 1,000 Terabytes Onto a Single DVD

Now that its bigger brother Blu-ray has stolen the spotlight, paltry 4.7 GB DVDs have slowly started to fade into obscurity. But could they be poised for a comeback? A trio of Chinese scientists have discovered a breakthrough process that could, at least in theory, allow a DVD to store a whopping 1,000 TB—or a full petabyte—of data.

The exact science and technology behind the discovery is detailed in this paper, but here's the gist of it in layman's terms. The storage capacity of a DVD is limited by the size of the laser beam burning the small pits that represent the streams of data. Blu-ray increased this capacity by switching to even smaller blue lasers, but the storage capacity of that technology maxed out as well.

You see, back in 1873, a German physicist named Ernst Abbe found that a beam of light focused through a lens could not be any smaller than half of the light's wavelength. And for visible light, which is used to burn digital media discs, that's around 500 nanometers. So instead of breaking that law, the researchers found a way to work around it using two beams of light that cancel each other out. And by ensuring the beams don't completely overlap, a much smaller beam can be created to burn even smaller pits on a disc, massively increasing its capacity.

There's a still a lot to be perfected before this technology could reach consumers. Like how these incredibly tiny pits of data can be actually be read after they're created. And since writing 1,000 TB of data would take forever, developing faster ways to burn discs will also be necessary before consumers are ready to adopt the new technology. But the prospect of DVDs and Blu-rays taking a quantum leap in storage capacity is still incredibly exciting. More here.

What Do You Think of Video for Instagram?

You're about to be able to cloak short video clips in vintage filters. Facebook just added video to Instagram, similar to Twitter's Vine app, only smarter. It has many more features than Vine—it looks like video sharing done right.

You'll Never Lose a Floating Cork Knife at the Bottom of a Lake

Are you planning an early summer lakeside knife fight? To ensure you have the upper hand grab one of these floating cork knives.

But really, how clever is this $26 blade? It's summer, so you're (hopefully) going to be spending a lot of time by the water. Maybe you're fishing. Maybe you're tending to the boat. Maybe you're camping near a creek. Whatever it is, you might need a knife. And this one won't swim away because it has it's always wearing its cork life jacket. More here.

Mars Had an Oxygen-Rich Atmosphere 4 Billion Years Ago

Though chances are Curiosity is going to come up empty-handed as far as living, potentially breathing Martians are concerned, four billion years ago might have told a very different tale. After recently examining meteorites and rocks from Mars, scientists have discovered that not only did Mars once have an oxygen-rich atmosphere, but it was developed over one billion years before Earth's.

Some of the rocks in question actually came from NASA's Spirit Mars rover, which scientists compared to Martian meteorites that had crash landed on Earth. Spirit's rocks, which came from a 3.7 billion-year-old section of the planet, show signs of early exposure to oxygen before they sank back into the terrain. The Martian meteorites, though, came from deep within the surface, which is why they appear virtually unaffected by any sort of oxygen-containing atmosphere.

Most exciting about this discovery, though, is the fact that an oxygen-rich environment is a very strong indicator for life. On Earth, we know that oxygen levels slowly increased thanks to photosynthesizing microbes, which just as well may have been the case on Mars. According to Professor Bernard Wood of Oxford University:

As oxidation is what gives Mars its distinctive colour, it is likely that the 'red planet' was wet, warm, and rusty billions of years before Earth's atmosphere became oxygen-rich.

Though it may still be mostly speculative at this point, there's a decent chance that all those wonderful pictures Curiosity beams down could actually be a peek into our planet's red, dusty future. More here.

Hidden iOS 7 Settings Reveal What Apple Is Working On

How to actually access the hidden settings is unclear as it doesn't appear to be readily available to everyone with the beta. The above video shows a handful of nice-to-have tweaks like the ability to nest folders within folders now that iOS 7 has pages within folders. You can even hide pre-installed apps!

Other hidden gems include gestures that are activated from corners or swipes from the edge. The latter of which can already be found in Mail and Safari, for instance. As 9to5Mac points out, we could see these new-to-iOS gestures for quicker app switching later on but not much else, as the settings are hidden and likely only for internal use. More here.

Why Haven't Mugs Told Us the Coffee's Temperature Until Now?

If you've got $38 to spare and a few weeks to wait for delivery, Brando's got a new temperature sensing travel mug that guarantees you'll never again burn your mouth on scalding hot coffee—or accidentally sip a stale brew that's gone cold.

A built-in thermometer lets the insulated mug report back how hot or cold its contents are via a two-digit LCD display on the outside. But if you can't make hide nor hare of the metric system mumbo jumbo it uses to display the temperature, the mug also has a heart on its side that glows blue, orange, or red, visually indicating how hot or cold your beverage is. Just don't expect your lawsuit against McDonald's to hold up when you're holding indisputable evidence your coffee was too hot to drink. More here.

They've Invented a Twist-Off Wine Cork and Life Will Never Be the Same

Just when you thought that mankind's genius could go no further, four years of research has given birth to a new apex in cork innovation. Please say hello to your newest wine-stopper, the Helix cork.

The product of a collaboration beween the industrious lushes at cork manufacturer Amorim and those at bottle-making company O-I, the new threaded, resealable design (and matching threaded bottle neck) is aimed at the "popular premium" wine market, which includes bottles that retail for between $8-$15, roughly. And while four years of research may seem a tad excessive, much of that time was spent waiting... and waiting... and waiting some more, allowing them to see whether or not the new cork had any effect on taste, aroma, or color. (Spoiler: it didn't.)

This kind of testing was necessary because the agglomerated type of cork used in the Helix is atypical of wine manufacturing. Since cork is cellular in nature, the presence of open spaces in a common, straight cork stopper is ideal—it allows the wine to fill those spaces, expand the cork, and form a tight seal. However, agglomerated cork is more granular, meaning fewer open spaces and less room for expansion. This would be a problem with a normal stopper, but the threaded design of the Helix creates its own tight seal, meaning oxygen can't escape on the sides while the density of the stopper prevents oxygen from escaping through the cork itself.

And its resealability is a major plus in the eyes of consumers, who want the convenience of a resealable container but still prefer cork to other methods of wine stoppering such as screw tops. According to Erik Bouts, O-I Europe president:

Cork is still by far the preferred stopper. Our research has found that at least 80% of consumers prefer the cork and glass combination for their wine. It has the highest-quality image in the market and now we have made it easier to use. And it is still the most sustainable option.

The Helix cork is being unveiled at Vinexpo in Bordeaux today, although its creators say it may still be two years before we start seeing it on shelves. So if you must have your fancy corks, until the day comes that we can leave the cork screws behind and securely reseal wine with ease, it seems your best option is to just finish the bottle. No one said being classy came easy. More here.

Origami-Inspired Clocks So Attention-Grabbing, You'll Never Run Late

Sometimes a piece of design is so interesting, it's hard not to drop everything and pay attention to it. Dressed in bright, bold colors, with sharp, tessellated forms, these origami clocks from U.K. firm Raw Dezign definitely fits the bill.

The clocks come in turquoise, yellow, and cream, and you can pick from gold, black, or silver hands. Each one is cast in resin, and the tickers are hand molded to give each clock face its own custom look. They go for $78 and ship in two to three weeks (because, you know how custom work goes). They're eye-catching, one-of-a-kind, and infinitely more interesting than clock of the run-of-the-mill cuckoo variety. More here.

These Stash Coins Are a Fantastic Way to Lose Your SD Card

The Man has his hand in your inbox, cops are intimidating citizens who film them beating other citizens, it's only logical to want to keep the private contents of your SD card, well, private. The Covert Coin from CCS Spy Gear is a precision-machined piece of retired US currency that are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing when closed. Which is great, until you accidentally deposit 16GB of files into a parking meter. More here.

Scientists Have Found the Ancient Secret of Indestructible Concrete

For the most part, we humans are better at things than we were thousands of years ago. But there are some things the ancients had down pat. Roman concrete, for instance, is just way better than anything we can whip up today. Finally, after some 2,000 years, modern-day scientists have figured it out. And it's a secret worth knowing.

Concrete, while often not exactly pretty, is a super important tool of city-building today. We've been using Portland cement (an ingredient in concrete) as a binder for nearly 200 years as a building block of modern architecture, but it just can't hold a candle to that old Roman stuff. There are concrete harbors in Italy that are still doing pretty well after thousands of years. Meanwhile, a modern-day Portland cement structure is lucky to last 50 years when exposed to saltwater.

Now, after years of research in labs across the US and Europe, scientists have figured out that the most robust Roman concrete is a specific mixture of lime and volcanic rock, the details of which have been published in this month's issues of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and American Mineralogist.

The researchers described it this way in a press release on the subject:

The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms. The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated – incorporating water molecules into its structure – and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.

And it gets even better. Portland cement is environmentally messy to produce, accounting for some seven percent of the C02 modern industry produces. Roman concrete? Much, much greener. There's still a lot of work to be done in adapting traditional Roman construction techniques to today's needs. But the recipe is as good as ever. We just have to get cookin'. More here.

While solar power promises a lot, it's only ever going to help satisfy our energy needs if it becomes efficient enough. Fortunately, Sharp has just made the world's most efficient solar cell, which converts a staggering 44.4 percent of incident light into electricity. Take that, fossil fuels.

The cell uses a special lens-based concentrator system, which focuses sunlight onto the cell to help improve the efficiency Once the light's focussed, a stack of three photo-absorption layers convert it into electricity. Even then it's no mean feat to squeeze out an efficiency of 44.4 percent, and the process saw Sharp invest a huge amount of time in tuning the device's dimensions to focus the light properly and reduce losses between layers.

While it's impressive, you probably won't see one strapped to the roof of a house any time soon. Devices this exotic are more likely to end up on a spacecraft in the first instance, where efficiency trumps cost every time. That's not to say it won't ever make it to the domestic market—it might just take a little time. More here.

Microsoft Office for iOS: Complete Video Walkthrough and Hands On